Assad decries ‘harmful, illegal’ airstrikes

Britain’s bombing campaign against Islamic State extremists in Syria is “illegal” and will only cause “terrorism” to spread, President Bashar Assad says in an interview published Sunday.

“It will be harmful and illegal and it will support terrorism as happened after the coalition started its operation a year or so (ago),” he tells The Sunday Times after British MPs voted on December 2 to join the US-led bombing campaign over Syria.

Terror, he says, is like a cancer which needed to be tackled with a “comprehensive” strategy which would involve working with troops on the ground.

“You cannot cut out part of the cancer. You have to extract it. This kind of operation is like cutting out part of the cancer. That will make it spread in the body faster.

“You cannot defeat (IS) through airstrikes alone. You cannot defeat them without cooperation with forces on the ground. You cannot defeat them if you do not have buy-in from the general public and the government,” he says.

“They are going to fail again.”

— AFP